Chemical Raw Material Leakage Accident Occurred In A Synthetic Leather Enterprise In Zhejiang

At about 5 p.m. on July 10th, a chemical raw material leakage accident occurred in an enterprise named "Zhejiang Yongfa synthetic leather" in the Lishui waterge Economic Development Zone, Zhejiang, which was located in the No. 316 of "Zhejiang Yongfa" road.

Hundreds of tons of toxic and flammable chemical materials leaked. Fortunately, cofferdams around the storage tanks played a major role in blocking the leakage of raw materials.

Thus avoiding large area pollution of the surrounding environment.

After knowing the accident, nearly 40 soldiers from the Lishui fire special service squadron and the Liandu fire brigade rushed to the scene to start the intense rescue work.

Disinfection tent, heavy chemical protective clothing, and a large number of shoulder and back oxygen tanks, which are not available in ordinary accidents, appear on the scene, which makes people feel the danger of accidents. The atmosphere at the scene is quite tense.

According to the firefighters who went to the scene to block the leakage of the tank, the leaking chemical raw material is a leather material called DMF, which is characterized by flammability and toxicity.

At the time of the incident, a tank with a capacity of about 170 tons DMF and a 2 meter water tank (the same volume as the DMF storage tank) had been tilted, resulting in a dislocation of 100 mm diameter pipeline connecting two tanks. As a result, the bottom of both tanks was cracked, and a great deal of water and chemical materials spilt out.

Although the spillover water has played a dilute role in chemical raw materials, if the raw materials flow willfully, it will cause a lot of pollution to the surrounding environment.

Fortunately, the factory built a circular cofferdam about 1.5 meters around the storage tank. After the incident, the leaking material was controlled in the cofferdam.

However, considering that two storage tanks store large amounts of liquid and spillover speed is very fast, once the whole liquid is leaked out, whether the cofferdam can withstand can not be guaranteed.

For this reason, controlling the speed of liquid spillover becomes the primary task after rescuers arrive at the scene.

At 5:30 p.m., when firefighters wearing heavy chemical protective clothing entered the cofferdam, the leaking material had not reached the knee position. But what was even more troublesome was that the cracked mouth of the storage DMF was very irregular. When the first attempt was used to block the mouth, the cork was quickly washed out because of the large hydraulic pressure.

Later, firefighters found a log about 2 meters long from the factory, and then processed the wood according to the size of the mouth.

Then the head of the log was sealed off the storage tank, and the other side was at the bottom of the water tank, which finally managed to block the 2/3 of the crack and control the spillover speed of DMF.

Meanwhile, the explosion-proof pump was used at the scene, and the waste liquid was pumped to another tank in the cofferdam to reduce the pressure of the cofferdam.

The work lasted for more than 5 hours.

In the process, in order to prevent accidents from happening again, in addition to the firefighters waiting on the scene, the Lishui environmental monitoring detachment and the staff of the Development Zone Management Committee also stayed at the scene monitoring.

According to the senior captain of the Lishui environmental monitoring detachment, after checking the scene, it was confirmed that the pollutants did not overflow to the cofferdam, and the air was not polluted.

At present, the staff of the city safety supervision bureau are investigating the cause of the accident.